I see that Ron Stahl just made an insightful observation over at talk-polywell. Good for him.

Sorry for being gone for awhile from this site, but when I've nothing to say, or am too busy, I usually just lurk and leave the rest of you to your own devices. My current activities revolve around supporting Jim Woodward's NIAC M-E proposals, building up a Houston based R&D Lab that will be investigating the type of gravitational phenomenon that Woodward, White and Brito have been looking into for a number of years now, and of course continuing the slow buildup at my home lab of my first self-contained, battery powered Mach Lorentz Thruster (MLT), running at ~2.0 MHz. This test article is about 80% complete and will be able to run for approximately 20 minutes between its Li-Poly battery charges. First light on this test article should be late this summer, and I hope to see similar results as was seen in my MLT-2004 and Mach-2MHz test articles as reported in my STAIF-2006 paper. As to all the rest of the speculations on this and other websites on this topic, follow the experimental data and let the theory fall where it may.

As far as I know, totally different principles and MUCH MORE theoretical work behind ME-Drive.

While this thread STARTED with EM-Drive discussions, most of it is about the ME-Drive.

You might want to give it a read. Star-Drive (Paul March) answered over a hundred different questions in this thread.

All:

You might find the attached preliminary PowerPoint based report of interest from Dr. James F. Woodward on his last 9 months of experimental work as edited by me. Dr. Woodward is now seeing consistent thrust signatures that are reversible in the 1.0 micro-Newton thrust range as captured using his ARC-Lite torque pendulum, which has a force resolution of ~0.05 micro-Newtons. The thrust magnitude and direction output of these PZT stacks are very phase dependent, so as these devices had their drive frequency swept through their mechanical resonant frequency just below 60 kHz, several thrust reversals are observed due to the phase reversals also observed between the 1-omega mass fluctuation signal and the 2-omega force rectification signal that was injected directly or generated in the PZT stack by its nonlinear response to its 1-omega drive signal. These M-E like forces are still very small, but they are now repeatable and appear to observe M-E scaling.

I've read enough of the theory papers (the "Flux Capacitors" paper is the best) to understand that this concept does not violate conservation of momentum. GoatGuy may have other legitimate criticisms, but he's wrong on this point. In any case, it does not matter what GoatGuy says because if this theory is correct, Woodward and March will demonstrate such, hopefully in the next year.

"If GoatGuy has problems with the M-E derivation, he should address those perceived problems directly and show where they are at fault in a rebuttal paper in the peer reviewed journal that published Woodward's M-E paper. The M-E derivation is contained in Woodward's "Flux Capacitors and the Origins of Inertia" paper as published in the Foundations of Physics Journal.

In the meantime the Woodward test team continues to develop and execute the experimental test program that is fleshing out the M-E conjecture."

I'll also append a portion of a comment from Ron Stahl also from Talk-polywell on this perpetual motion nonsense:

"When all the examples are said and done with, the simplest observation is, that it is this ability to alter the inertial mass of objects (on demand) that is at the core of all conservation violation arguments. Once you grant Mach's Principle, that Matter gets its mass from gravity, and you grant Woodward's derivation results--that matter's mass can be temporarily fluctuated, you have a whole new set of rules to cope with. You can't make the simplistic perpetual motion machine arguments that served for high school physics, because that physics presumes the mass of matter doesn't change."

"Paul451" over at NBF claimed the measured effect is most likely due to a vibrating spring inertia illusion. Have you guys tested for this?

GeeGee:

I believe you are talking about a Dean Drive or ratchet drive, correct? I suppose it's always possible that some sort of viscoelastic response between the 60 KHz ultrasonically vibrating parts of the PZT stack flowing through the multiple mutiple-axis vibration isolation mounts placed between the PZT stack and the torque pendulum might be generating a thrust like response, especially at these micro-Newton thrust levels seen by Woodward and Mahood to date. However, the recorded thrust output appears to be insensitive to these residual vibration levels observed at the Faraday shield mount or torque pendulum pivot with the accelerometers placed at these locations to look for this kind of effect. And one would think that the observed thrust levels would have to track these vibration levels if the thrust signature had its origins in a viscoelastic ratcheting effect, but they don’t as is demonstrated by the ARC-Lite pendulum's forward minus reverse thrust plot appended to this post. Of course the only real way to prove this observation beyond a shadow of doubt is to fly a self-contained and space qualified M-E device in free fall, turn it on, and see if it accelerates or not. Currently we don't have the R&D budget to try this kind of experiment.